A good question for your upcoming Lent quiz: where are angels mentioned in the Nicene Creed? I asked this at a vicarage supper party after finishing Peter Stanford’s highly informative book about angels, which had left me angel-obsessed and an angel bore. No one came up with the answer. ‘Of all things visible and invisible, of course!’, I declared triumphantly.
Once you see it, it’s obvious that the ‘invisible’ are the angels, but it had never occurred to me before. The Early Fathers, drawing up their unifying statement at the Council of Nicaea in 325, needed to make it clear that the angels were a part of God’s creation, fighting back against the Gnostics, who worshipped angels but believed that everything to do with this world was the work of the devil, and that the only angels involved in creation were fallen ones.
Writing that has reminded me that Stanford’s book, though excellent, is theologically quite complicated. You need to be a willing pupil to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it. I’ve just re-read the bit about exactly what the Gnostics believed about angels and am still confused. Theology can be baffling.
Angels are a tricky subject to tackle, being so nebulous and fleetingly glimpsed. I take my hat off to Stanford for having a go. The book has changed my life, as I now think about angels all the time and keep spotting them in paintings, on book jackets and in the verses of hymns. I’ve never read a book with so many winged figures, sudden encounters between humans and strange visions, angel-adorned gates, haloes, gowns, bare feet and moments on mountains when someone sees something dazzling in a dream. If you concentrate, you’ll be taken on a thrilling journey through theological discussion, with a generous helping of art history thrown in.
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